Gerald of Wales and the Angevin Kings

Steele, Helen

Published Online (2006)

On the 10th of November 1203, Silvester Giraldus Cambrensis attended a meeting at Westminster Abbey in London at which Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, announced the selection of Geoffrey de Henelawe as Bishop of the See of St David’s. Although five years before, the canons of St David’s had elected him their choice for Bishop, and although he had pushed his claim vigorously with two kings and a pope, Gerald of Wales accepted the decision quietly. He resigned his archdeaconry and retired from public life. For decades, he had nursed the ambition to become Bishop of a St David’s independent of Canterbury. This ambition had driven him and ultimately became an obsession.